Chuck Lane's Food Stamp Solution

Over at The Washington Post, a formerly great newspaper now functioning as a loss leader for the educational-testing institute, they really don't like poor people very much, and they like the programs that make the lives of the poor people a little easier even less. Comes today Charles (Chuck) Lane (Harvard '83) with a solution to the battle over food stamps.

End them.

Scoreboard!

But, don't worry, all you poors. Chuck has your back. He suggests you fry up the Earned Income Tax Credit and serve that en brochette for dinner tonight.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Abolish food stamps, on one condition: Congress would have to distribute the SNAP budget among other programs for the poor, for which many SNAP recipients also qualify...Supporters hail SNAP as a key income support for the working poor, seniors and the disabled, as well as an "automatic stabilizer" that bolsters demand during economic downturns and then recedes during recoveries.

That's true - but the government already has programs, and bureaucracies, for each of those groups and policy goals. For example, a third of the seniors living on food stamps also get Supplemental Security Income (SSI). And unlike food stamps, the other programs - SSI, the earned-income tax credit, unemployment insurance - deliver benefits in the form most poor people find most useful: cash.

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Choose, old poors. Gas to get to your minimum wage job or food. Decide! Now!

Reallocating the SNAP budget to beef up the rest of the safety net would also eliminate food stamps as a perennial political target.

Yeah, because giving in to the cruel, stupid and marginally racist conservative rump in the Congress always ends every argument.

The current flap is about work incentives. Some in the GOP argue that rising SNAP enrollment is recreating the dependency that was supposed to have been abolished by welfare reform in 1996. The House passed an amendment by Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) last week that would let states impose welfare-reform-like work requirements on SNAP - and keep half the money they save.

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Southerland is a crank and a fool who's been in Congress for about 11 minutes. Why shouldn't we tear up a useful program for the purpose of appeasing him?

Democrats understandably recoiled at a measure that gave states an incentive to kick people off the rolls. It did seem like overkill for a program in which 30.5 percent of recipient households in fiscal 2011 had earned income, according to USDA data - and an additional 24.6 percent of households consist of elderly and disabled individuals living alone. They are not expected to work.

Slackers! Let them deal with the mighty power of Steve Southerland.

If the working poor's current share of food stamps went instead to increase the earned-income tax credit and expand eligibility for it, Republicans and Democrats would have less to argue about. The tax credit is a wage supplement, delivered through the income tax system, widely considered one of the most successful federal programs at encouraging work and eliminating poverty. It has also enjoyed consistent bipartisan backing.

Yeah, right. Also, the EITC never should be confused with, you know, food.